On a sleek white stage made to look like a 1960s New York penthouse, one of pop music’s biggest exponents Sabrina Carpenter is sitting on the toilet. A few seconds earlier she’d wiped down the seat with a tissue before taking her spot to sing Sharpest Tool, a sweary, country-flecked bop about a hapless man who found God at his ex’s house.
It’s a brilliantly bonkers vista that encapsulates Carpenter’s ability to fuse unfiltered emotional sincerity with a heavy dose of kooky camp. Think peak era Katy Perry mixed with every era Dolly Parton. As one-third of last year’s pop girl summer alongside Charli xcx’s blitzkrieg agit-rave and Chappell Roan’s vampy queer anthems, the 25-year-old American not only dominated the charts – her three UK No 1s from star-making sixth album Short n’ Sweet spent 21 weeks at the top spot in 2024 – but she did it with a refreshing nudge and a wink.
In fact, parts of tonight’s innuendo-stuffed set, pitched as a 1970s variety show complete with title cards, cheesy voiceover and advert breaks, border on Carry On Carpenter. Switching to the boudoir part of the stage for the laid-back sex jam, Bed Chem, we see a silhouetted Carpenter performing overtly sexual moves with a male dancer to screams of delight from the mainly female, mainly preteen audience and shock from the accompanying parents. “There are eight-year-olds in the crowd,” one mum says behind me, clearly having missed the “parental discretion advised” warning flashing on the big screen.
Even the show’s opening setup – Carpenter shown on screen in the bath apparently having forgotten she was due onstage only to appear before us wrapped in a glittery towel lined with a union jack – screams Barbara Windsor. Meanwhile, the plush roller-rink gloss of Juno concludes at the tip of a phallic runway topped off by a bulbous, deep red heart that in Carpenter’s world definitely represents more than one thing.
But Carpenter doesn’t rely on humour as a crutch, aware perhaps that kook can easily calcify into cartoonish. The downcast Dumb & Poetic excoriates a fuckboy who thinks a newfound spiritualism means all is forgiven, while Lie To Girls, which features the tiny Carpenter swamped by an acoustic guitar, turns the blame inwards: “You don’t have to lie to girls / If they like you, they’ll just lie to themselves” she sings, backed by a chorus of thousands.
A glorious Please Please Please, which allows Carpenter to show off her Broadway training as she locks into the intricate choreography of her dancers, is followed by the woozy comedown of Don’t Smile. The show’s credits start to roll. With the penthouse strewn with the bodies of passed-out dancers, Carpenter returns to add one last dose of pep. “Do you fancy a cuppa?” she asks, just about avoiding a British accent she’d threatened all night. “It’s coffee not tea, sorry,” she continues as the nu-disco strut of Espresso kicks in, its nonsensical lines – “I Mountain Dew it for ya” – ricocheting off the walls and hitting like a gospel.
As the confetti comes down, Carpenter has time to survey her disciples, some of them resplendent in Short n’ Sweet football tops – number on the back? 69, obviously – while others sport hoodies emblazoned with the cheeky “Jesus was a Carpenter”. After tonight’s delirious performance, everyone should be.
